Stephen Kotler of Prudential Douglas Elliman
Prudential Douglas Elliman gave The Real Deal an update on its new Web site, which will include VOW capabilities and track listings’ price changes.
Elliman has spent a year and more than $1 million developing the new Web platform, which is slated to launch the first week of April, according to Stephen Kotler, an executive vice president at the company.
The redesigned site will include a virtual office Web site, or VOW, that allows customers to see not only Elliman’s listings, but all of the properties for sale in the markets where Elliman has offices: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Hamptons, and Long Island.
Kotler, who is overseeing the launch of the new site, said the fact that Elliman’s VOW capabilities extend to markets outside New York City will set it apart from other brokerage Web sites.
“What will make ours stand out is the fact that it’s not just Manhattan,” he said. “There’s nobody in the marketplace that is going to deliver all the [region’s] listings in one place.”
Elliman is the second major city brokerage to introduce VOW capabilities. In December 2009, Halstead Property announced that it would enable its agents to host VOWs on their individual Web sites.
This summer, Manhattan got its very first VOW, an online brokerage known as CBS 2 Real Estate Market. A number of smaller firms have also announced plans to test out the new technology, including A.C. Lawrence.
Due to a 2008 settlement between the Department of Justice and the National Association of Realtors, the Real Estate Board of New York is required by law to feed its listings directly to VOWs hosted by REBNY members, provided they pay an auditing fee and agree to certain guidelines.
Elliman’s site, like all VOWs, will require users to provide contact information and log in to the site before viewing other firms’ listings, though they can browse Elliman’s exclusive properties without registering.
The log-in requirement is one of several VOW elements that have drawn criticism from some in the industry.
“The consumer must register with the VOW as their ‘buyer,’ something which many customers do not want to do,” Klara Madlin, the president of MLS Manhattan, said in an e-mail to The Real Deal.
Frederick Peters, the president of Warburg Realty Partnership, told The Real Deal at this year’s REBNY banquet: “My opinion of the VOWs is they’re fine, but I think that they will ultimately be insignificant because I think the one thing we all know about the consumer from research that’s been done all over the country over a long period of time is that the consumer hates to leave a footprint,” he said. “And so if the consumer has the opportunity to go on search sites, which they can do anonymously, or they have to sign on to a VOW with an entire page of personal information required, they’re going to choose the no-footprint site.”
Others have said that New York City VOWs don’t offer as much information as those in other places, and the auditing fee is too expensive for small firms. According to REBNY’s Web site, firms are charged a fee of $3,750 for each audit, which takes place every six months the first year and annually after that.
Despite these criticisms, VOWs are being embraced by New York City real estate firms. Elliman started developing its new Web site in April 2009 in part because of the VOW’s impending arrival, Kotler said, and also because Elliman’s current site is five years old and needed a redesign.
Much like the popular real estate listings site Streeteasy.com, Elliman’s new platform will track properties’ price changes over time. But Kotler said he doesn’t consider Streeteasy.com a competitor, since Elliman’s new site will offer brokerage services in addition to market information.
Streeteasy.com “is a great place for people to go and get educated,” he said. Elliman’s site will be “a transparent place for people to go where they can get all the information, but also see [in person] the properties for sale.”
Derrick Gross, a business analyst at Streeteasy, agreed that the two aren’t in direct competition because Streeteasy.com has a “vastly different business model” from brokerage companies.
Moreover, “we’ve garnered a lot of trust from the consumer over the past several years and we believe that they prefer to search and gather information from a neutral third party Web site,” he said. “We have many unique features like our discussion boards, recorded sales, school zoning, building information, and years of historical data that brokerages will not have on their sites.”
Kotler said the new Elliman site will feature “user-generated content,” though exactly what form that will take is still being developed.
